Adesola Sulaimon
Ebonyi state governor, Dave umahi has said that it is impossible for the Federal Government to borrow 1.1 trillion naira to meet the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)

Umahi said this in a statement on Wednesday at the new government house in Abakaliki, the state’s capital.

Although, the governor agrees that the demands of the union are genuine and for the betterment of the educational sector, he added that their insistence on full payment of their demand was unreasonable because the government cannot borrow to meet their demands.

He, however said a fraction of their demands can be met for now and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address their other demands.

He said ” I cannot see how we cannot sit down with our ASUU leaders and iron out this problem about the ASUU strike.

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“I have read on social media and newspapers, how students got into trouble just by sitting at home or engaging in means of keeping themselves busy instead of being in schools. There is no way the country, Nigeria will go and borrow 1.1trillion to meet ASUU’s demand. It’s quite unreasonable. Are their demands genuine? Yes, but we can start little by little.

“There must be commitment on the side of both parties, ASUU is not asking this to take to their houses so to say, they are asking it for our children to better the infrastructure, to better the lecturers and the students. Yes, but we can start with a fraction of that and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address all the lots.

“But let me also say that most of the time, our people have low appetite for maintenance of public works. No matter how much you deploy to these universities, unless the users, the industry, the regulators begin to treat public infrastructure as their own in the various universities, it will continue to go bad no matter how much the federal government deploys to it.”